Sales and Trading Forum

MD Interview - Trade Support/CaptureHi all, So I have got through the 1st and 2nd stages for a Trade Capture role at one of the BB. The 1st stage was a competency heavy with some technical questions. The 2nd stage was technical heavy questions with some competency. Please could somebody advise what to expect from the 3rd stage (M...

singh99

1

2 months

+1

Structuring - How quantitative is structuring?I did a search on role of a structurer and the desired skillset. However all that I came across was a need for "excellent quant skills" and stuff in similar vein. To clarify, how much of quant knowledge are we considering? Is it maybe linear algebra, basic probability theory excel manipulations or ...

donk33

15

2 months

+3

FICC sales trading deskBasically, I am trying to understand what are the key requirements to join a FICC Sales/Trading desk at a large IB. How hard is it? In particular, how hard would it be to get the job if you are NOT a young grad, already with some year or experience? Would a BSc in business, a MSc in Finance, some ...

horseradish2

22

2 months

+1

What is the "Investing" sub-division of S&T?? (Goldman) Goldman Sachs for London Summer internships offers the possibility of choosing between: - sales -trading -investing - management and strategy I had never heard of the last two and would love to know what the role consists of because the website does not have any information on it. Thanks! ...

How Much of a Threat is Automation to Finance Jobs?Recently had lunch with someone in S&T who warned me against pursuing certain careers in finance, particularly S&T, because of the likelihood that automation/AI would replace a significant amount of jobs. I've seen a few forums claiming exactly that dating back several years, and articles like [this...

Jane Street Capital - Review - Prop TradingCompany is friendly rational and open, they teach you from bottom up, projects can be tailored to your skills, standard perks such as breakfast, lunch, gym, talks, takeout, etc.. Open floors make you kind of paranoid when you're not working, traders are expected to eat at their desks....

Natixis - Review - Sales and TradingReally good quality of life, if you are looking to hang out for a couple years with no ambition it's perfect for you.. Low pay, difficult to climb the ladder to management. Really the only major criticism I have is the low pay and correspondingly low ops away. ...

Vitol - Interview - EnergyHow do you think your previous experience would make you a good addition to this company? You do not have any prior experience in commodities. What makes you think you will be a good fit here. Your experience in the banking sector deals with paper trades rather than physical trades, how do you thi...

Private

2 months

+3

Physical Commodities: Shell vs. BP vs. Trading House Grad ProgrammesLooking for some career advice from long-time physical trading experts here on WSO. This past summer, I interned on one of Shell's trading floors, and worked hard to network with every desk on the floor. Tremendous learning experience, developed good relationships around the floor, and I believe t...

LongGamma94

11

2 months

Peak6 Investments - Interview - Prop TradingThe puzzle questions I talked about up above. Weird crossword looking number questions which were i guess a mixture of pattern and sequence recognition. There were also visual puzzles that made little sense to me. Threw me off right at the beginning. But we will see if I get called back. Other than ...

Private

2 months

Akuna Capital LLC - Interview - Sales and TradingMaking markets on the number of wins of a baseball team during a season. Make sure you know why you are giving the bid and ask that you are giving. The rest of the questions were relatively simple expected value and probability questions. One Monty hall similar type question, a coin flipping questio...

Private

2 months

Goldman Sachs - Review - SecuritiesPeople were great, but SLC seemed like a dead end. Many of the FT employees here in SLC are parents . Exit Opps, Ability to make a real impact. We were also back office, felt like monkeys clicking stuff all day...

Jane Street Capital - Interview - N/AThe most difficult interview question was a question about the correlations of random variables. Given three random variables x,y,z with corr(x,y) = corr(y,z) = 0.8, what possible values can corr(x,z) have? I realized immediately that the upper bound is 1 with (x=z). I didn't recall the exact de...

Private

2 months

Credit Suisse - Interview - Sales and TradingThe whole interview was set up like a conversation. I was mainly asked behavioral questions in both my first round and my superday. For the first round, I got asked a lot of questions about campus involvements - how i work in a team, bad teamwork experiences, how I handle everything/deal with burnou...

Private

2 months

Susquehanna International Group - Interview - N/AMost of the questions on the online assessment were fairly straightforward, conditional probability/stats, pretty basic math. One of the harder questions: you have a coin that lands on heads 70% of the time and tails 30% of the time. You flip the coin, and it lands on tails. Given this, what is the ...

Guide into stock brokingExcuse my English. I am a worried student with a passion for business and a hope for a good future. Primarily I look for stock broking run up advice and go I would go about looking for a stable and successful career within that area. Could I have advice on how I should prepare, and what exams/opti...

Bensamsmith

3

2 months

JP Morgan Securities - Review - Corporate BankingI have only worked here for a week, but the training has been very good. All of my peers have been friendly with help from upper management.. It can be stressful having to take more time to learn about things that are not directly related to my spot...

Optiver - Interview - Prop TradingMost of the interview onsite consisted of market-making games, which were used to see how quickly you could think on your feet and keep track of multiple pieces of information at once. This was by far the most difficult part of the interview as it was decently math heavy but mostly because I doubt c...

Private

2 months

Optiver - Interview - TradingThe HR phone interview questions were (not inclusive, and not in order): - Tell me what you know about Optiver. - What qualities are desirable as a trader? - What courses are you taking at your university? - How did you get to know about Optiver? - Tell me about a time when you worked really hard. ...

Private

2 months

+1

Collateral Optimisation - Any insight?It seems to be a front office unit which has evolved from the classical collateral management role. Is it an interesting for a graduate? How are the hours? Any exit opps? Any insight would be really appreciated. ...

DonaldDuck

1

2 months

Akuna Capital LLC - Interview - Prop TradingThe most difficult questions were the mathematical questions. The mental maths was extremely tedious and long to do. The sequences were quite unexpected and often had very obscure patterns. Often not involving the alphabet at all but rather abstract concepts (such as the first letter of the months o...

Private

2 months

Akuna Capital LLC - Interview - TradingThe most difficult questions asked were mental math related and probability questions. One question during the phone interview was to compute the square root of a large number. The probability questions were expected value questions. Some coin flipping questions as well. Also, there was a question a...

Citi Corporate Banking Superday - October 7th - Interview - Fixed Incometested knowledge of the industry asking about current market trends and mergers and how a student would stay up to date on these things, also asked specific behavioral questions about life experience, having a lot of extra curricular to talk about was helpful. Had to know technical terms for one of ...

Private

2 months

HSBC - Review - N/AVery lay back environment. People are friendly. Manager really care about emoployee. good life-work balance. Not much growth opptunities. Banks have many legacy problems. HSBC group doesn't recogonize US as home market with little concentration in US....

Kershner Trading - Review - Prop TradingGreat place to work. I like the eat what you kill culture of trading. Generous profit spirit and potential to go higher with success. . Eat what you kill. Seen some people go, but consistent success is rewarded. I wouldn't have it any other way....

JP Morgan Securities - Review - N/AThe company was very great with its interns and helped make the transition into full time. It has a great development program.. I wish the employees gave more time to their interns and took the relationship further outside of work....

What's up with the futures basis?Anyone know what's up with the futures basis? It's spiked since the beginning of 2018 along with the spike in the VIX. Is this due to negative carry? ...

ccmr

4

2 months

+1

How tough is it to break into Physical/Commodity Trading?Been applying to graduate programs at trading houses and the supermajors but unfortunately I haven't had any luck (I'm from Asia, if that's relevant information). Therefore I am exploring my options to eventually break into trading commodities. From the advice that I have gathered and what I have r...

DtimesDmeasures

1

2 months

Optiver - Interview - TradingThe initial mental math test was fairly challenging and a bit unprecedented. It consisted of a combination of mental math and sequencing questions with the aim of maximising the number of correctly answered questions in a set time. There is a combination of straightforward maths and difficult math q...

Private

2 months

+1

Common Signs of Institutional Trading/Buying?Is it possible to recognize when institutions are buying into a stock? What are the common signs? Do institutions try to push prices of volatile stocks down to re-enter at a lower price? (i.e activating stop-losses kind of things) I've been looking at certain weed stocks and have seen a few $1 Mil+...

leveragedblackout

2

2 months

Susquehanna International Group - Interview - Prop TradingHardest question so far was on the online test: an unfair coin with known probability of heads is flipped once and lands heads. Compute the expected number of flips until the number of heads equals the number of tails. After that it’s basic counting, probability, conditional probability, pricing a...

What happened to TraderTest? Hey all, Sorry if this is in the wrong forum - if it is, please let me know where is best to post. I have been practicing for my Akuna first round using Tradertest, but I guess today or yesterday, the site went down. Are there other websites that are similarly formatted that I could use? Thanks!...

longsock123

7

2 months

+1

Trust is the thrust of your tradingThe title is really true for any occasion in our life. Most of our brain is too emotional for the real world. Even cool-headed people cannot do any work when they don’t have any confidence in themselves. And trust builds up that confidence. It is not related to trusting others but trusts yourselve...

Cargill - Interview - CommoditiesNot many dificult questions, they wanted to assess how risky an individual was in the company, so describe times when you took a risk, what happened as a result, etc. There were some basic questions regarding physical trading, so what do they do, what factors go into deciding whether or not to make ...

Private

2 months

+1

The Ingredients Of Body Slim Down Garcinia CambogiaAs is clear from the item name and product packaging, the main ingredient in Body Slim Down Garcinia is Garcinia cambogia extract. When you see a product like this one, you will certainly have to examine just how much portion of HCA it utilizes. This portion shows the quality of the Garcinia we mak...

Citi Full time S&T.......................................................................................................................................

square40

2

2 months

+1

Am I smart enough to become successful at a market-oriented job?I have always wondered whether I am intelligent enough to be successful at a position that requires you to generate some sort of alpha. I certainly have the right background, I'm studying computer engineering and mathematics, and I'm doing some self-studying on financial markets and financial engi...

WChurchill

1

2 months

+11

Traders lose moneyHello! I hear that many/most traders lose money. To what extend is this true? I mean like 70% of traders lose money and they end up with their basic salary and no bonus? Or 0.01% ? Any insight? thanks! ...

investro

50

2 months

JP Morgan Securities - Interview - Sales and TradingThe questions were mostly standard given the research i'd done. I was asked what makes a good salesperson and gave a lengthy answers based on my sales experience. I have been asked this question in other interviews before. I was also asked about the general economy, like what are the implications fo...

Private

2 months

+1

Trading vs. Private Equity undergrad InternshipHello, Background: I am a non-target student with no finance related major but am apart of investment related clubs. I have a couple of places I am most likely getting offers at right now for an undergrad internship in both Trading (think Flow Traders, Optiver, Akuna, etc.) and Lower Middle Market...

Zen.Monkeys

1

2 months

JPMorgan Chase - Review - Sales and TradingGood salary, team culture is collegiate, everyone is pretty helpful and straightforward, office politics are kept to a minimum, junior members are respected and pulling rank is uncommon.. Generally long working hours (i.e. 12 a day, 6 to 6). Learning curve is steep when it comes to understanding cli...

Private

2 months

Barclays Capital - Interview - Prime BrokerageThey asked if I had experience using one of their proprietary software systems. I didn't expect that because most places have some universal systems but tend to have many proprietary solutions customized for their different lines of businesses. Given this was a pretty niche and esoteric product grou...

Five Rings Capital LLC - Interview - Prop TradingFirst phone interview was all with HR. This consisted of behavioural questions, technical questions, and fermi questions. All of the questions were being read of a sheet by HR, and my answers were being jotted down, no thinking required, just straight answers. - Behavioural: the usual; why trading, ...

Private

2 months

JP Morgan Securities - Review - Sales and TradingWork culture was amazing, great people all round. Great week of training for interns. All acommodations paid for.. Intern class was competitive and slightly toxic. Heavy emphasis for mandarin soeaking capabilities. ...

Optiver - Interview - Prop TradingThere weren't really any difficult or unexpected interview questions, they were mainly very simple and common behavioral. E.g. Why did you apply to Optiver, why do you want to do trading, why did you major in the major that you did, why did you choose your college, a brief resume overview, and small...

Private

2 months

Citigroup - Review - Sales and TradingGreat team, cool boss, great managers who can teach a lot of solid knowledge and also have fun with you.. As contract staff, I have to leave within two months. Not the best way to end this great internship....

Laid off from S&T role, looking for exit oppsHello, Need some career advice from more experienced hands. I was laid off from a S&T role couple of weeks ago and am still figuring out what to do. Couple of other people were also let go with me and I cant really explain why I got let go (Stopped thinking about it to be frank) I worked hard from...

bookerdewitt

1

2 months

Akuna Capital LLC - Interview - Prop TradingTalk about something you enjoy that isn't academically-related. I wasn't prepared for this one. A question on flipping 3 coins. Just needed to look at the 8 outcomes and eliminate some based on the conditions. Question about hands on a clock and what the angle is (common). Another one about when the...

Private

2 months

Jane Street Capital - Interview - Quantitative ResearchA game of rock paper scissors is played such that everytime you win your opponent gives you a dollar and everytime your opponent wins you give them a dollar. What is the expected value of this game? The game is modified so that you pay your opponent one dollar per game to never throw rock. What is y...

Private

2 months

Morgan Stanley - Review - N/AThis was a great place to work and I would definitely recommennd going into sales and trading at this firm. There is really not much to say in terms of cons. It is like any s&t role, but I would definitely recommend it...

nomura securities - Review - EquitiesNomura is a reputable global brand; as an added bonus, it's not under Volkner rule so prop trading is allowed (though they have scaled it down significantly in the last two years). For traders, good funding levels and pretty flexible balance sheet policy.. Japanese risk taking culture, i.e. risk was...

Private

2 months

BNP Paribas - Review - N/A* good work life balance, especially when compared to some of the American banks * Internship is done on a rotational basis, which gives you really good exposure * generally supportive culture . * pay and prestige definitely less than the other US banks * often there are many people f...

Desk Analyst?Anyone out there a Desk Analyst? Curious to hear what your days like/what you even do?...

wallstreetballa

32

2 months

Optiver - Interview - Sales and TradingThe hardest type of questions had to do with the fractions. 56 / 7 / x = 4. Then you had to solve for x in a matter of seconds. Another question had to do with decimals like 0.008 * x = 0.00056. I would also know the first 10 prime numbers as they frequently show up in the sequences. Sequences ...

Private

2 months

0

Credit Portfolio Trading. How is it?I am going to be an SA at a big bank this summer. I just learned I am going to be at the credit portfolio trading desk... To be honest, I don't really know anything about that desk.. How is it comparing to a normal rates, FX, or commodities desk? If this desk is mainly trading or hedging the bank's ...

ricebun

3

2 months

+2

Canada S&T CompensationWhat is the Base and Bonus breakdown for Canadian Big 5 Sales and Trading at Analyst/Assoc/higher level? I know it is largely dependent on bonus and risk, but would appreciate any color ...

IveyKid

7

2 months

JPMorgan Chase - Interview - Sales and TradingThe most difficult question were about markets. I was caught off guard by how deeply they asked into the markets questions. I decided to talk about oil as my current event and the interviewer kept digging deeper in questions about the global oil trade and how tariffs or sanctions were affecting the ...

Private

2 months

Susquehanna International Group - Interview - N/AThey will talk about random stuff like their kids prom while you are doing a brainteaser to get you to be distracted. In the middle of your work, they'll also ask you a series of random questions like whether you like to eat x, y, z. The goal is to try to stay focused while they try to distract yo...

Private

2 months

+1

Week to prep Series 7Hey all - I'm about to take the series 7 exam within 2 days. I had about less than a week to prepare (3 day live training with knopman and Qbanks). With the paper/practice exams, I am pulling around high 60s (67-69). The QBank is just wrecking me. Is the exam equivalent to the Qbanks? Ive read that...

CLO StructuringHi all, I am interesting in applying to a structuring role at my firm, move across from M&A. The role is a CLO structuring position, and helping out the CLO Primary team. I'm not very familiar with this area, M&A is well documented but there not much information on structuring here. Can someone ...

queensbury

3

2 months

Morgan Stanley - Review - Fixed IncomeIts is really good firm to work at, with lots of options and really helpful people. They have a very all round training program.. As a junior its difficult to learn about different desks of the firms. They are still not very technologically savvy. ...

Morgan Stanley - Interview - Prime BrokerageThe interview started with the usual walk me through your resume request. The second question they asked is if I knew what Prime Brokerage was. When I said yes, they asked me to explain what Prime Brokerage is and what they do. Why Prime Brokerage as opposed to what you did for the summer? Have ...

Private

2 months

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S&T Roles Post-MBAi will start this off by saying I realize that an MBA is not the normal path for S&T, but it does happen. I am just curious what type of roles people are getting. Are they purely getting sales roles or are some getting trading or structuring? Especially curious coming from schools with focused asset...